Victoria
The figure type of this Victory follows a traditional Greek formula for depicting an alighting Nike, going back to fifth-century models like the Nike of Paionios at Olympia or the Nike in the hand of the Parthenon cult statue—striding stance, blown-back chiton, wings back and slightly spread rather than folded. The point to this Victoria is that she is about to be placed on top of the globe in Augustus' hand: the group about to be constituted is the Victory-on-a-globe group (fig. 20) that Octavian set up inside the Curia Julia (plan 122)[39] to celebrate his victory at Actium over Antony and Cleopatra. The group proclaimed the world dominion of Rome guided by the senatorial order in that it was set up to preside over
the deliberations of the Roman Senate; in an equally pointed way, it proclaimed the world rule just won by the young Octavian, "son" of the divus Julius in whose name the Senate house had been rebuilt by Octavian. The Senate, then, was to guide Rome under the auspices of the Julian clan, a truth they were literally forced to enter and to behold (exiting the chamber, they were of course struck by the view of the facade of the temple of the divinized Caesar and below it the altar marking his funeral pyre).
The significance of this Victory group was that assigned to the battle of Actium itself: at once a smashing conquest of Rome's foreign foes and the deathblow to the cycle of civil wars begun again with Caesar's death. The group was not a new commission but an "Old Master" taken from Tarentum in South Italy; perhaps it was meant to be seen as an Italian Victory. Immediately famous, the group remained for centuries a stock figure symbolizing Roman world rule, losing special reference to Augustus. However, here at the beginning of the Principate, a Victory with palm and wreath on a globe would have meant the Actium group, with all its associations particular to Augustus' own career. This kind of playful and sophisticated visual reference, where a famous monument is depicted being "consummated," occurs elsewhere in Augustan official imagery (see the Conclusion).